


Take Me Back

by NightshadeArabs



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:55:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23744920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightshadeArabs/pseuds/NightshadeArabs
Summary: I wrote this mind dump for myself, but I am putting it here in case someone else needs it.
Kudos: 3





	Take Me Back

Can we go back to the drunk texts? That night you called me, drunk, wanting someone to talk to, to laugh with. We stayed up, talking about your guys until way to early in the morning. Can we go back to game nights? The projector aimed at the large blank wall in the house you lived in with Dad and your brother? Can we go back to when I didn’t know what either of you meant to me, just that it was a lot?  
Can we go back to staying up all night just to watch the sunrise? Can we go back to taking over the computer room just to hang out and do absolutely nothing? Can we go back to Neopets, Terapets, Gia-online, and Sims? Can we go back to the days of motherlode and watching in amusement and horror as our sims tried to cook and burnt the house down?  
Can we go back to sharing a bed at the hotels when dad had to go to the VA? Can we go back to you introducing me to Starbucks and bread machines?  
Can we go back to when you kissed me, and it was the first time I felt anything spark when kissing someone? Can I ask you if you felt it to? We never talked about it. We were just too close and too far at the same time. Now I will never know.  
Can we go back to me practically living at your house to escape mine? Dad including me in his plans as if I really were one of his flesh and blood? Can we go back to sneaking through the field, just to play in the creek? Can we go back to you teaching me that I could shave my legs while wearing shorts and sitting on the edge of the tub? Can we go back to Halloweens that were far too cold, layering as much as we could under our costumes while taking your pillowcases out for candy?  
Can we go back to you having a bunk bed and I slept surrounded by your stuffed animals on the top bunk? Can we go back to you introducing me to Nutella and hominy? Ok, we can skip the hominy, I still think it tastes like shit.  
I will always say I don’t want to go back to high school. That time was hell for me, but it was hell that I got through because of you.  
And now you’re gone.  
I just want to go back to our messages, you telling me that you still have that towel I gave you. Me confessing that I stole your fuzzy blanket the last time you stayed over.  
I still sleep with that blanket. I’m still scared of something bad happening to it. It’s the last thing I have of you.  
I still remember the day you called, and I knew something was wrong before I even heard your tear-filled voice when I answered. That day you called to tell me our dad died. You didn’t say, “my dad died” you called to tell me “our dad died” because you always knew. I would have moved heaven and earth to be there for you, and somehow it worked, and we got to see each other again. You were distraught that I was able to be there for you when you couldn’t be there to bury my mom. I told you I forgave you, and I did, because you had been thousands of miles away and yet I had never felt like you weren’t there. I had never felt like dad wasn’t there. You had both supported me fine at that distance and I needed you to know that.  
The day you called to tell me about dad still has nothing on the day I got the call about you. I walked up the driveway and just sank to the ground. You would have giggled at me, for how cliché it was. I just couldn’t understand how someone like you could be gone. I have plenty of experience with death, both as an adult and as a child. Hell, that is part of the reason we bonded so hard. We never had to talk about the biological parents we had lost too soon. We just had comfortable silences as we did our homework together.  
Yet even with all my experience with death yours caught me by surprise. It blindsided me so hard that my world came crashing down and I still haven’t recovered. You see I may have had nightmares about losing mom, but when she died, I was expecting it. That’s the small mercy of someone being sick. Then, though it hurt, and I hadn’t realized how much he meant to me until he passed, I still wasn’t too thrown by dad. But you, we were supposed to get old together. I was supposed to have years before I lost you.  
Yet I feel like some sort of fraud in my suffering. We weren’t related by blood, and I had felt like a fraud in my grief when dad died also. I wasn’t really his kid. Sure, you and everyone else reminded me I was, but you know I have had imposter syndrome my whole life. Yet, impostor or not, you were as close to me as anyone could possibly be. I loved you, I still do, with everything I have. You knew I never cared to get married, you knew I never wanted to have children. You knew everything there was to know about me in high school when I felt like no one in the world cared.  
Even as I cried while eating a banana the other day, I mused to myself that you would have been laughing, making some joke about the size of the banana. I can’t even look at ramen noodles without thinking about you, how you showed me the lazy way to eat them, just breaking the noodles into chunks and dipping it into the powered flavor dry. You would also laugh at me if you knew that I had a single clock in my house set ahead a few minutes, just like the clocks used to be in your house.  
So much of me is shaped by you and now I must find some way to pick up all those pieces and try to make myself functional again.  
Without you.


End file.
